I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

President Obama has invited the Muslims of the world not just to some
introspection but, however suavely said, some self-flagellation as well
after the terror attack in Paris. The inference here seems inescapable:
whatever may have been done to the “Muslim” world, beginning from the
time of the usurpation of Palestine, it is they who remain both
responsible for the fate that afflicts them and obliged to find all the
remedies. Curiously, all that even as the powers-that-be also tell us
that terrorism has no religion.

Some questions then seem to beg themselves: is every German to be
held responsible for the holocaust and obliged to carry on
self-flagellating for what the Third Reich did? Is everyone in the
Christian world to be held guilty for the sixty million deaths of
non-White people that took place during the slave trade? (See Howard
Zinn, Peoples’ History of the United States) Is every American
culpable for that first genocide of modern history, namely, the
extermination of the “Red Indians”, or that first and most horrendous
act of terrorism, namely, the use of the atom bomb which annihilated
some two hundred thousand innocent Japanese at one go? Is every Catholic
to be held responsible for the Inquisition? Is every Russian to be
thought guilty of assenting to the Stalinist purges? And, nearer home,
is every Hindu complicit in the assassi-nation of Mahatma Gandhi, or the
atrocities committed by the LTTE, culminating in the assassination of
Rajiv Gandhi? Must every Hindu be required to self-flagellate for what a
Colonel Purohit or a Sadhvi Pragya or an Aseemanand has allegedly done?
Or, every Sikh in the violence perpetrated by Khalistani separatists,
leading to the the murder of Indira Gandhi? Or, must every Buddhist in
the world do penance for the excesses committed by the state in Sri
Lanka or in Myanamar? If so, we do here have a call for global
self-flagellation, no one excepted.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Note: I am reproducing one section of
Chapter 4 (pp. 146-153) from my book, Development of the Concept and
Theory of Alienation in Marx’s Writings (1995). My aim is to present
Marx’s ideas on religion in the context of his theory of alienation for a
wider audience. For complete abbreviations and references, see the book
(link provided at the end of this paper).

For Marx religion is primordially
an active form of ideological alienation, where inverted
world-consciousness and mystification become the essential elements of
the alienative process. Marx’s writings show that he hardly ever thought
it worthwhile to discuss theological formulations or religious dogmas.
The question of religious consciousness for Marx was a matter of little
interest. Karl Löwith writes: ‘By advancing towards the criticism of
man’s material conditions, Marx does not simply leave behind the
criticism of religion but rather assumes it on a new level; for though,
on the basis of the social-political world, religion is but a false
consciousness, the question has still to be answered: Why did this real
world at all develop an inadequate consciousness? If we assume with Feuerbach that the religious world is only a
self-projection of the human world, one has to ask: Why do the latter
project the first and create a religious superstructure? . . . It is not
enough to state with Feuerbach that religion is a creation of man; this
statement has to be qualified by the further insight that religion is
the consciousness of that man who has not yet returned from his
self-alienation and found himself at home in his worldly conditions’
(Löwith 1949, 48, 49).

Marx’s approach to religion in his early thinking can be seen in his
letter of November 1842 to Arnold Ruge, where he says that ‘religion
should be criticised in the framework of criticism of political
conditions rather than that political conditions should be criticised in
the framework of religion … for religion in itself is without content,
it owes its being not to heaven but to the earth, and with the abolition
of distorted reality, of which it is the theory, it will
collapse of itself’ (CW1, 394-95). If religion is without any content,
then the whole problematic of religion can be reduced to a particular
mode of products and as such it is always a reflection of the material
historical developments. In Anti-Dühring, Engels writes: ‘All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in
men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a
reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of
supernatural forces. In the beginnings of history, it was the forces of
nature which were so reflected and which in the course of further
evolution underwent the most manifold and varied personifications among
the various peoples . . . But it is not long before, side by side with
the forces of nature, social forces begin to be active — forces which
confront man as equally alien and at first equally inexplicable,
dominating him with the same apparent natural necessity as the forces of
nature themselves’ (Engels 1978, 382-83). In this lucid exposition,
Engels points to the roots of religion in the early phase of historical
development of mankind. At this stage, the primitive man comes to the
realisation of his helplessness when he is face to face with the
gigantic and mighty forces of nature. His effort to appease these, leads
to primitive nature worship. But at a later stage under the
antagonistic class society, the exploited classes of society face to
face with the social oppression, and in their helplessness give birth to
and foster religion, the belief in a better life hereafter, the alleged
reward for suffering on earth (see Foreword to Marx & Engels 1972,
8).

In this connection, Kostas Axelos, the French Marxist of Arguments
group, sums up the Marxian position: ‘Being the expression of impotence
and alienation, religion in turn, in its own modality, alienates man
from his life and from his essential forces. Far from being some kind of
index of the strength of human being, religion comes about only owing
to man’s weakness, his frustrations, his dissatisfactions, his
alienation. An abstraction from concrete conditions, religion is a
product of the alienation of man on the level of both practice and
theory. Mystery, far from implying a truth of its own, veils the truth
of reality and masks its own mystification’ (Axelos 1976, 160). Within
the sphere of developed productive forces under the institutionalized
private ownership, ‘religion begins to express the alienation of man in
relation to the products of his labour as the imaginary satisfaction of
unsatisfied real drives. The non-development of productive forces
determines the genesis of religion, and this later development
determines its subsequent “evolution” ‘ (ibid. 159-160).

At the time of writing the Introduction, Marx’s conversion
to the standpoint of theoretical communism takes place. In the beginning
of the essay, he excellently summarises his views on religion. Marx is
referring to the philosophical critique of religion and the religious
alienation accomplished by the Young Hegelians from Strauss to Feuerbach
when he says: ‘For Germany, the criticism of religion is in the main
complete, and criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism’
(CW3, 175). There are possibly two main reasons for Marx’s viewing of
religious criticism as the premise of all criticism. First, religion
stood in the way of any political change in Germany by its adamant
support of the Prussian state. It meant that any change in the political
sphere was possible when the powerful support of religion to the status quo
was removed. Secondly, religion per se represented the most extreme
form of alienation, and it was at this point that secularisation had to
start; religion was the pivotal point for the criticism of other forms
of alienation (see McLellan 1972, 185).

Marx succinctly summarises the accomplishment of Feuerbach’s religious philosophy:
‘The profane existence of error is discredited after its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [speech
for the altars and hearths] has been disproved. Man, who looked for a
superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and found nothing
there but the reflection of himself, will no longer be disposed to find out but the semblance
of himself, only an inhuman being, where he seeks and must seek his
true reality’ (CW3, 175). Religion, in Marx’s view, was ‘the
self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found
himself or has already lost himself again’ (CW3, 175). The intellectual
climate in which the young Marx lived was dominated by the Young
Hegelians’ atheistic critique of religion. In the beginning, he shared
their viewpoint, but ‘he became disenchanted with their war of words.
What eventually turned Marx against philosophical forms of atheism, as
he understood them, was their failure to grasp the fact that religion
has a justificatory function which resists philosophical critique’
(Myers 1981, 317).

A recurrent theme in Marx’s criticism is the transformational
characteristic of religion. The social structure in the first place
provides the basis for the inverted world of religion because it is in
itself an inverted world. In this, he differs from Feuerbach. Marx does
not simply reduce religious elements to any more fundamental elements:
‘The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man . . . But man is no abstract being encamped outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, an inverted world-consciousness, because they are an inverted world’ (CW3, 175).

Marx in his evaluation of religion uses a series of illuminating
metaphors to show the place of religion in an inverted world: ‘Religion
is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its
logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn compliment, its universal source of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence
because the human essence has no true reality’ (CW3, 175). Religion, on
the one hand, expresses the real social distress, and on the other, it
seeks to justify the social oppression. ‘The struggle against religion
is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the spiritual aroma. Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest
against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless
conditions. It is the opium of the people’ (CW3, 175).
Presumably, Marx thought that taking drugs like opium helped to bring
about a condition of illusions and hallucinations; it also proved as a
palliative, a consolatory refuge from the heartlessness and hardships of
the real world. Religion for Marx is a medium of social illusions. An
alienated and alienating human existence calls for these illusions. The
need for these illusions is not illusory; it is real. Marx in his much
later work, Capital, describes religious world as ‘a reflex of the real world’ (Marx 1977, 83).

Marx’s description of religion in the Introduction has
sometimes been seen to contain a positive evaluation of religion.
However, this view can be attributed to a perfunctory understanding of
Marx’s ideas. McLellan in his book, Marxism and Religion,
rightly says that if it was so, then it was an extremely backhanded
compliment: ‘Religion may well represent humanity’s feeble aspirations
under adverse circumstances, but the whole tenor of the passage is that
religion is metaphysically and sociologically misguided and that its
disappearance is the pre-condition for any radical amelioration of
social conditions’ (McLellan 1987, 13).

The way to overcome religious consciousness is therefore through the
changing of the conditions, which provide a material base to inverted
consciousness in society. ‘A strictly materialistic critique of religion
consists neither in pure and simple rejection (Bauer) nor in mere
humanisation (Feuerbach) but in the positive postulate to create
conditions which deprive religion of all its source and motivation. The
practical criticism of the existing society can alone supersede
religious criticism’ (Löwith 1949, 49). Religious persecution and
coercion as a political tool only serve to strengthen the chains of
religion. The critique of religion, accordingly, addresses itself to the
issues in the world that produce and keep religion.

The editors of Marx and Engels: On Religion point out that
‘Marx and Engels most resolutely denounced the attempts of the
anarchists and Blanquists, Dühring and others to use coercive methods
against religion. . . . They proved that the prohibition and persecution
of religion can only intensify religious feeling. On the other hand,
Marxism, contrary to bourgeois atheism with its abstract ideological
propaganda and its narrow culturalism, shows that religion cannot be
eliminated until the social and political conditions which foster it are
abolished’ (Marx & Engels 1972, 9). The illusory consolation of
religion cannot be remedied by the removal of religion: ‘To abolish
religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of vale of tears, the halo of which is religion’ (CW3, 176).

Marx in the Introduction makes it abundantly clear that the
criticism of religion is not a goal in itself. The criticism of religion
is only a premise for every other kind of criticism; it is not more
than that. The real aim in the exposure of religion is not that it tears
up the imaginary flowers camouflaging the alienated life of the people,
but rather that the people ‘shake off the chain and pluck the living
flower’ (CW3, 176). It is essential, therefore, that the criticism of
religion becomes a criticism of politics: ‘The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form
of human self-alienation has been unmasked, is to unmask
self-alienation in its unholy forms. Thus, the criticism of heaven turns
into the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion into the
criticism of law and the criticism of theology into the criticism of
politics’ (CW3, 176).

In these formulations, Marx went beyond the Young Hegelians like D.F.
Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner, and Feuerbach, who criticised
everything by making everything a matter of religious representation.
‘The total domination,’ writes Axelos, ‘was presupposed, and religious
concepts dominated all realities and all ideas; so that, after first
interpreting everything in a religious and theological way, these
critical critics would attack that very domination as a usurpation of
the true and natural life of man. They wanted to free man from their
religious bonds. And yet, since they are the ones who viewed everything
through religion, their negation of what held man in chains remained
ideologically critical, abstract, theological in an anti-theological
form, and simply long-winded’ (Axelos 1976, 161).

Marx’s critique of religion, on the other hand, focuses on the world
from which it takes shape, and it is this malaise of alienation, which
needs to be extirpated. He gives a materialist explanation to the
religious consciousness. ‘Marx undertakes a critique of reality as it is
and of the ideology that corresponds to it, a critique that would end
by compelling the practical and revolutionary transformation of
everything in existence. The battle is engaged not in the name of
“philosophic truth” but in order to supersede alienation on a practical
level and free both productive forces and men’ (ibid. 161).
Marx, in his early theory of alienation, views religion as a fantasy of the alienated man.
‘Religion rests on a want, a defect, a limitation. Its truth resides
in practice, though religion itself, as religion, possesses no practice,
just as it does not have a history of its own. Since practice, of which
religion is always the sublimation, did not contain real truth,
religion has been only the alienated expression of a real alienation
and, of course, has contributed to the continuance of that alienation.
Marx does not recognise any formative and basic role for religion . . .
There is not even any question of the “divine” or the “sacred”; these
are but products of the alienation of religious imagination, which is
itself a by-product of alienated material production’ (ibid.
165). In Marx’s estimation, religion being a phenomenon of secondary
importance merited no independent criticism. In his later works, the
element of class ideology becomes his major concern.

Some writers have characterised Marxism as a religion, and have also
questioned Marx’s atheism. Robert Tucker, for instance, writes: ‘The
religious essence of Marxism is superficially obscured by Marx’s
rejection of the traditional religions. This took the form of a
repudiation of “religion” as such and espousal of “atheism”. Marx’s
atheism, however, meant only a negation of the trans-mundane God of
traditional Western religion. It did not mean the denial of a supreme
being . . . Thus his atheism was a positive religious proposition. It
rules out considerations of Marxism as a religious system of thought
only if, with Marx, we equate the traditional religions with religion as
such’ (Tucker 1972, 22; see also Reding 1961, 160). According to this
approach, Marxism is to be analysed as a religious system within the
Judaeo-Christian tradition, and as such it can be assimilated in
theology. Eberhard Jüngel in his book God as the Mystery of the World
advocates this: ‘The Marxist critique of religion could much more
easily be accepted by theology than that of Feuerbach, if the latter
were not presupposed by the former. Certainly one can integrate
critically the specific interest of Marx’s critique of religion into
theology — and in some ways it must be done. But that is the current
fashion anyway, so that there is scarcely too little being done along
these lines theologically’ (Jüngel 1983, 341, footnote 43).

The positions taken by Tucker and Jüngel concerning Marx’s atheism in
fact confuse the issue. Our point of departure in this matter is that
Marx viewed religion, without any reservations, as a medium of social
illusions, and that all the religious belief claims were false. Marx was
a thoroughgoing atheist. In his writings from the earliest to the
latest, there is no indication, explicit or implicit, admitting the
existence of God. Marx absolutely rejects any idea of a transcendent God
or a personal God (i.e. God in the human form); therefore, any
religious belief claims like God becoming a human being or a human being
becoming God, etc. are false and nonsensical linguistic aberrations and
they are nothing more than that. Marx’s atheism cannot be reconciled
with religious and theological presuppositions. The loud exclamations
about God from the authoritarian pulpits cannot bring into being which
is a non-being. Turner rightly suggests: ‘It simply will not do, as some Christian apologists maintain, that
Marx was only a relative atheist, that he rejected only the God espoused
by the Christians of his day, that this God (primarily the God of the
nineteenth-century orthodox Lutheran establishments) is not the God of
contemporary Christianity, or that as others suggest, his hostility to
theism may have no purchase on that contemporary Christianity. Marx
rejected not only particular forms of theism but also any reference
whatever to a transcendent reality’ (Turner 1991, 322; see also
Lobkowicz 1967, 303-35).

According to Marx, the history of the world is the creation of man
through his labour, which is explicable solely with reference to man
without the mediation of a divine being. In the EPM, for instance, Marx writes: ‘But since for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world
is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but
the emergence of nature for man, so he has the visible, irrefutable
proof of his birth through himself, of his genesis. Since the real existence
of man and nature — since man has become for man as the being of
nature, and nature for man as the being of man has become practical,
sensuous, perceptible — the question about an alien being,
about a being above nature and man — a question which implies the
admission of the unreality of nature and of man — has become impossible
in practice’ (EPM 100). This pronouncement leaves little room
for any other interpretation of Marx except that there is no room for
God in this world or anywhere else outside it.

Marx’s discussion of religion in the Introduction, shows that he was well acquainted with the Western religions and their various traditions. In OJQ and the Introduction,
Marx, no doubt, has the contemporary dogmatic Lutheranism in Germany in
his view, but he writes about religion in general and therein his
rejection of it is absolute. For him atheism, as a negation of God was
inseparable from humanism which postulates the existence of man through
this negation.

--------------------Abbreviations used:

Introduction ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’

Sunday, November 22, 2015

While focusing on the ‘failure’ of American foreign policy in the
Middle East it is relevant to acknowledge that given the circumstances
of the region failure to some degree was probably unavoidable. The
argument put forward here is that the degree and form of failure
reflected avoidable choices that could and should have been corrected,
or at least mitigated over time, but by and large this has not happened
and it is important to understand why. This analysis concludes with a
consideration of three correctible mistakes of policy.

It is also true that the Middle East is a region of great complexity
reflecting overlapping contradictory features at all levels of political
organization, especially the interplay of ethnic, tribal, and religious
tensions internal to states as intensified by regional and geopolitical
actors pursuing antagonistic policy agendas. Additionally, of
particular importance recently is the emergence of non-state actors and
movements that accord priority to the establishment and control of
non-territorial political communities, giving primary legitimacy to
Islamic affinities while withdrawing legitimacy from the modern state as
it took shape in Western Europe. Comprehending this complexity requires
attention to historical and cultural background, societal context, and
shifting grand strategies of geopolitical actors.

From many points of view American foreign policy in the Middle East
has been worse than a disappointment. It has been an outright failure,
especially in the period following the 9/11 attacks of 2001. Even such
an ardent supporter and collaborator of the U.S. government as Tony
Blair, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has acknowledged
as much in a recent set of comments where he basically says that the
West has tried everything, and whatever the tactics were relied upon,
the outcome was one of frustration and failure.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Nasir Khan, Nov. 11, 2015
–“Better to die fighting for freedom than be a prisoner all the days of your life.”

― Jamaican musician Bob Marley (1945-1981)
———–
To gain freedom from social, political and religious oppression is a
great thing for every sentient human being. As we know we are living in a
world where the ‘ruling ideas of the age’ we are living in, are related
to Power – in all its nefarious forms. Political power, economic power,
social power, religious power – all such different faces
of power are intertwined; they contribute to the same goals and the
same targets. Politically conscious people know that the targets are the
ordinary people of any given society, whether in the advanced
capitalist societies or the ‘developing’ countries. If the people became
aware of the overall bondages they are subjected to, they will strive
for freedom.

The fact remains that only a very tiny minority develops such
consciousness; for the vast majority the established order is more like
the divine writ, which none should question. However, any ideas and
actions to challenge the established order are not easy either; they
often have unexpected harsh reactions and consequences. The
revolutionaries of the past ages have shown that nothing comes without
struggle. In our age, it is still the revolutionary thought and praxis
of Marxism that has to ‘bear the cross’. This is despite all the howling
of the jackals of reaction and their ilk.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Nasir Khan, Nov. 10, 2015–“The strangest thing of all is that our ulama these days have divided
science into two parts. One they call Muslim science, and one European
science. Because of this they forbid others to teach some of the useful
sciences. They have not understood that science is that noble thing that
has no connection with any nation, and is not distinguished by anything
but itself. Rather, everything that is known is known by science, and
every nation that becomes renowned becomes renowned through science. Men
must be related to science, not science to men.

How very strange it is
that the Muslims study those sciences that are ascribed to Aristotle
with the greatest delight, as if Aristotle were one of the pillars of
the Muslims. However, if the discussion relates to Galileo, Newton, and
Kepler, they consider them infidels. The father and mother of science is
proof, and proof is neither Aristotle nor Galileo. The truth is where
there is proof, and those who forbid science and knowledge in the belief
that they are safeguarding the Islamic religion are really the enemies
of that religion.” — Lecture on Teaching and Learning (1882).

— Sayyid Jamal al-Din Afghani (1838 – 1897)
—————-
A short biography of Al-Afghani, a famous rationalist thinker and Pan-Islamic political activist of the 19th century:

Introduction

Also known as Asadabadi because of his now-proven birth and early
childhood in Asadabad in northwest Iran, Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
(b. 1838/9–d. 1897) was a pioneering figure in promoting political
activism to counter British encroachments in the Muslim world and in
advocating Muslim unity against Western conquest. He wrote and spoke in
favor of Islamic reform, modernization, science, and a variety of
political ideas, including nationalism, political reform, and pan-Islam.
His reformist and politically activist views influenced men involved in
major political movements in Egypt from 1875 to 1883 and in Iran from
1890 to 1892. His ideas and activities have remained influential in the
Muslim world. The variety of his writings, and of writings about him,
have led a wide range of Muslims, from leftist reformers to religious
conservatives, to honor him. In his lifetime he spent time in several
countries; in chronological order of his first stay in each country, he
spent time in Iran, Ottoman Iraq, India, Afghanistan, Ottoman Istanbul,
Egypt, France, England, and Russia. He was expelled from Afghanistan,
Istanbul, Egypt, and Iran because of his political activities. While
thousands of books and articles have been written about Afghani,
especially in the languages of Muslim countries, most of these have
important distortions, often going back to inaccurate stories he told
about himself and to an apologetic biography written by his main
disciple, the Egyptian Muhammad ʿAbduh. ʿAbduh’s biography was written
largely to counter what were widespread reports that he was born and
raised in Shiʿi Iran and not, as he claimed, in Sunni Afghanistan, and
that he was not orthodox in his beliefs and spoke in different ways to
different audiences. His own writings and recorded words show that he
often told different and inaccurate stories about his birth, education,
nationality, religious and political views, and relations with the
powerful.

Biographies

The three books cited below are largely based on primary sources,
some of which first became available in 1963. These documents add to the
prior Iranian and other proofs that Afghani was born in northwest Iran
and that he was educated in Iran and in the Shiʿi shrine cities in
Ottoman Iraq. They include documents from his first trip to Afghanistan
as a young man, which is also discussed in India Office documents, and
from other stages of his life up to his 1891 expulsion from Iran, when
he left these documents at the home of his Tehran host, Amin az-Zarb.
The books, especially Keddie 1972,
show that most previous biographies of Afghani were based on an
apologetic account by his disciple, Muhammad ʿAbduh, who accepted
Afghani’s account of an Afghan, and hence Sunni, birth and childhood.
ʿAbduh also tried to refute current charges that Afghani was not an
orthodox Muslim believer. Most Western and Iranian scholars accept the
basic points made by Keddie 1983 and Pakdaman 1969,
but several Sunni Muslim writers do not. Keddie and Pakdaman recognize
the pioneering role of Afghani in spreading modern and reformist ideas
in the Muslim world, his courage in opposing powerful rulers, and his
innovations in methods of oppositional politics. Some Sunni authors,
however, consider Afghani a great hero and reject the idea that he often
did not tell the truth about his Shiʿite origins and other matters.

This is a long, source-based biography with many quotations from
Afghani and primary sources, a critical introduction regarding
bibliography, and appendixes of Afghani’s letters. It evaluates a great
variety of sources in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Russian, French, and
English, many never before used, and has long passages quoting and
translating these sources.

Keddie, Nikki R. An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn “al-Afghānī.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Hardcover originally published 1968. Half of this shorter book
analyzes Afghani’s life and thought, and half has translations of some
of his articles and, co-translated with Hamid Algar, an English version
of the original Persian of the “Refutation of the Materialists.” This
edition contains a new introduction, “From Afghani to Khomeini.”

Friday, November 06, 2015

—------

“The purpose of separation of church and
state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has
soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.

[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]”

― James Madison (1751-1836). He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America and its fourth President.
————-

While underscoring the importance of the separation of Church and
State, James Madison had in view the gory history of Europe over the
course of at least 18 centuries of political strife, horrifying tortures
and violence because of the unquestioned power of the church over the
states and within the political systems of states. The rulers had to
obey the commands of the Catholic Church. After the Reformation, the
Lutheran including the Calvinist churches also had immense power over the states.

In fact, the question of the separation of Church and State in a
broader sense is the question of the separation of Religion and State.
After the end of the medieval times, there was a movement towards the
freedom of conscience. The people had to be freed from the clutches of
centuries-old ironmould of Religion.

It meant a challenge to the clerical authorities who had imposed
their will and their interpretations of what God may have said or
ordered. Thus, the chief custodians of the divine truth who had
arrogated all powers on behalf of God to themselves for so long found
themselves confronting a new situation. Their monopoly over what God
said was under question. That was dangerous, very dangerous!

Now some thinkers and enlightened people said what people believed in
matters of a Divine Power or Religion was a personal matter; this was
secularism. It was no business of the state to impose the will of the
clergy on the people. According to them, people should have the freedom
of conscience.

For most people, it was a novel idea; they never had anything like
this for so many centuries. Thus, a revolutionary idea was introduced
that had far-reaching effects. Consequently, the process of freedom of
conscience and the secularisation of state and society gained more
ground in most of Europe, North America and Australia, etc.

While the western countries made such inroads into enlightenment,
freedom of conscience, and gave legal protection to people to believe or
practise any religion, the vast majority of Muslim countries have
followed a different course.

The ruling classes and the Muslim clergy became close partners to
advance their respective agendas. In fact, they found Islam as a
convenient tool to gain power and influence over a people who had a
strong cultural identity with Islam. This they exploited to the maximum.
That opened the way for the fanatics, misguided and indoctrinated
people to clamour for an Islamic polity under the rule of God.

As a result, we see the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Daesh in
Syria and Iraq, and many Islamist groups and organisations causing
havoc. One thing: They are convinced they represent the light of Islam.
They are offering the salvation to worldwide Muslim people (the ummah);
the golden age of ‘Islamic truth’ and ‘Islamic justice’ is near when the
Sharia laws of the seventh-century Islamic Arabia will be enforced.

In fact, many ordinary Muslims think that the era of the early
Caliphs of Islam of the seventh-century Arabia will solve all their
worldly problems. It is logically possible that such a golden age can
emerge if there was anything like this before!

However, we may pause for a second and think (not easy though): The
world has moved with the times, including the Christians of Europe and
their descendants in North America and Australia, etc. How will
Islamists go back from the 21st century to the seventh-century Arabia?
The only possibility I can see is if Aladdin with his magic carpet
appears and transports us back to our golden age, back in time. If he
does that I’m sure he will give me some space on his magic carpet; I
promise to report back to all of you my story from there!

Wednesday, November 04, 2015

“Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.”

— Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776)

I assume many educated readers (excluding the indoctrinated or
brainwashed ones) would readily understand that by ‘scholastic learning’
David Hume meant the traditional dogmatic learning. In his days, this
was the case not only in European countries but also in many other
countries in Asia and Africa.

For the ordinary people – especially poor peasants, paupers and
labourers – the clerics played a pivotal role in imparting some
traditional knowledge that was primarily focused on religious dogmas,
scriptures, rituals and rudimentary skills in writing and reading.
Religious dogmas and rites were akin to knowledge, the true knowledge.
Everything else was of secondary importance. However, under the impact
of Renaissance and then the Enlightenment, European nations also
ventured into new directions relating to teaching and learning.
Nonetheless, the hold of the Church still affected the vast majority of
the people.

In these times, the dominating position the clergy had enjoyed for so
long has gradually weakened because of the political and social
struggles of the democratic and socialist forces. Nevertheless, the
situation in traditional societies in Asia remains
precarious. For instance, we witness an alarming degree of
institutionalised religious indoctrination that has become an accepted
norm in the socio-political systems of some Muslim countries.

Tuesday, November 03, 2015

“There are many hypotheses in science
which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to
finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.”

― American scientist and cosmologist, Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
———
The body of knowledge ranging over vast areas in physical and social
sciences is enormous, both in quantity and quality. While in physical
sciences any new evidence may support, modify or refute any existing
theories, there is a lot of laxity in
the social sciences where competing theories and postulations may exist
at the same time or may refute the earlier positions held by some.

However, the undercurrent that
determines the course of search and research in both the physical and
social sciences is the scientific method of inquiry – experimentation,
gathering factual data, testing propositions, making more hypotheses
along the way, etc. – that is more of a process, an incessant struggle
to seek and make adjustments in the light of new information. As a
result, there is no room for anyone to make claims for the end of such a
‘self-correcting process’, as Sagan aptly says.